INTRODUCTION
• Tomorrow will be a time of celebration in the United States oF America!
• We will be celebrating the 246th anniversary of the birth of our nation!
• A great deal of sacrifice has been given and bloodshed over the idea of having a Republic like ours.
• We enjoy the freedom and prosperity that very few nations in history have enjoyed.
• With great freedom comes great responsibility.
• Our Founding Fathers understood this concept and knew that this great nation would eventually fall like all others before without a solid foundation.
• When our nation was founded, it was built on something new, a foundation of Christian principles.
• The nation's founders were imperfect at best, but they had a perfect idea when they decided to fight for the nation.
• The founders knew that if the nation was not built on the foundation of Jesus, it would falter.
• Charles Carroll, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, said:
Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime & pure, [and] which denounces against the wicked eternal misery, and [which] insured to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments. (Charles Carroll. November 4, 1800)
(Source: Bernard C. Steiner, The Life and Correspondence of James McHenry (Cleveland: The Burrows Brothers, 1907), p. 475. In a letter from Charles Carroll to James McHenry on November 4, 1800.)
• Samuel Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, said:
[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. (Samuel Adams, 1749)
(Source: William V. Wells, The Life and Public Service of Samuel Adams (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1865), Vol. I, p. 22, quoting from a political essay by Samuel Adams published in The Public Advertiser, 1749.)
• John Adams, Second President of the United States and signer of the Declaration of Independence, stated:
[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams, October 11, 1798)
(Source: John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. 1854), Vol. IX, p. 229, October 11, 1798.)
• I can ride all day on this train.
• As a nation, we have been drifting far from the foundation the nation was built upon.
• We have elected leaders who have no soul and whose only ambition in life is power.
• We have political parties, as Washington predicted would happen, that are self-serving, with the goal to hold on to power over doing what is right before God and best for the nation, even when it is not popular.
• Many are seeking to build a utopia, which on the surface seems fine; however, they are seeking to do it without God.
• I could spend all our time this morning talking about the specific ways we have drifted from God; from abortion to redefining marriage; instead, I want us to consider an example from the Old Testament that gives us a shot across the bow, a warning, an example of what happens when we seek to leave God out of the picture.
• Today's message looks at the rise and fall of the Tower of Babel.
• This story contains themes relevant to our day, showing us the futile end of humanity's best efforts to claim independence from God.
• Let's turn to Genesis 11:1-9 Our primary focus will be on verse 4 today.
Genesis 11:1–9 (NET 2nd ed.)
1 The whole earth had a common language and a common vocabulary.
2 When the people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” (They had brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar.)
4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.”
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building.
6 And the LORD said, “If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them.
7 Come, let’s go down and confuse their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.”
8 So the LORD scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city.
9 That is why its name was called Babel—because there the LORD confused the language of the entire world, and from there the LORD scattered them across the face of the entire earth.
SERMON
I. The endeavor.
• As we read Genesis 11A population explosion has occurred since the floodwaters receded.
• Cultural progress is also rapidly progressing.
• At the same time, sin once again begins to permeate humankind.
• The story of the Tower of Babel is another major rebellion that occurs early in Genesis.
• The story does not occur chronologically after the events described in chapter 10, which specifically describes multiple nations and languages.
• The location of this event takes place "in a plain in Shinar" (v. 2).
• Shinar (see Joshua 7:21), where the same Hebrew word is translated "Babylonia" ") was a fertile valley in the lower region of southern Mesopotamia at the Tigris-Euphrates basin.
• (Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, vol. 1 [Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997], 23).
• The people decided to settle in this area and build a city.
• Building a city was not the sin; the problem was their motivation and objective, which we will dig into as we progress this morning.
• The endeavor was to build a tower that reached the heavens.
Genesis 11:4 (NET 2nd ed.)
4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.”
• "The tower of Babel is regarded by all scholars as one of Mesopotamia's famous man-made sacred mountains—a ziggurat (ZIGG OO RAT)."
(Michael S. Heiser, "What Really Happened at the Tower of Babel?," Logos Talk [blog], November 15, 2017, https://blog.logos.com/2017/11/really-happened-tower-babel/)
• Ziggurats were divine dwellings where Mesopotamians believed heaven and earth intersected.
• The nature of this structure makes evident the purpose in building it—to bring the divine down to earth.
• "The temple complex was the central feature of these early cities in southern Mesopotamia. … The temple complex in this period would have been comprised of the temple itself, where the patron deity was worshiped. …
• Ziggurats were structures designed to provide stairways from the heavens (the gate of the gods) to earth so that the gods could come down into their temple and into the town and bring blessing . . .
• At the top was a small room for the deity, equipped with a bed and a table regularly supplied with food.
• In this way, the deity could refresh himself during his descent."
• The focus we put on the story is the tower, but these folks were going to build a city where they could dwell.
(Victor Harold Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, and John H. Walton, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, electronic ed. [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000], Genesis 11:4).
• When we get to verse 5, it looks like they started building the city and tower.
II. The motivation.
• What drove the people to want to build this city and tower?
• To make a name for themselves.
Genesis 11:4 (NET 2nd ed.)
4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.”
• This action represents a direct and open rebellion against God.
• Humankind's primary goal is to glorify the name of the Lord, not to promote and glorify their own name.
• The building of the tower and city will make it widely known and famous!
• They also wanted to prevent themselves from being scattered, which we will dive into in the last point.
• The desire to be great above God signifies pride and arrogance.
• To whom would they make a name?
• The name that they might make for themselves would only impress themselves!
• The phrase "make a name for ourselves" in this narrative contrasts with the call of Abram in chapter 12.
• Abraham obeys the Lord's command to leave and is promised that a great name will be made for him by the gracious God who calls upon him to leave.
• Having a great name comes from God's gracious promises, not from making a name for ourselves.
• In response to this to the desire of the folks to ignore God, in verse 5, we see that the Lord came down for a visit!
• "The ziggurat would have been built so that God could come down into their midst to be worshiped and bring a blessing with Him."
(Matthews, Chavalas, and Walton, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, Genesis 11:5).
• "In a statement full of incredible irony (11:5–6), God does indeed come down to see what these rebellious city-builders are up to.
• However, God brings judgment rather than coming down and blessing the people.
• In Genesis 11:6 God states,
Genesis 11:6 (NET 2nd ed.)
6 And the LORD said, “If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them.
• The phrase 'nothing they plan will be beyond them' likely refers not to the heights of accomplishment that humanity might achieve but to the depths of sin to which humanity is capable of falling.
• In other words, 'If I let their sin go unchecked, there is no telling how much worse it will get. No rebellion will be too great for them. Nothing will be sacred in their crooked hearts'"
(Kurt Strassner, Opening up Genesis, Opening up the Bible [Leominster: Day One Publications, 2009], 55).
• When we try to bring glory to ourselves, the effort will ultimately fail when.
• As a country, when we seek to be great on our own, it will fail, and if you look around, you can see that playing out.
III. The goal.
• The goal of building the city and the tower was to avoid doing what God wanted them to do.
Genesis 11:4 (NET 2nd ed.)
4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.”
• Again, this is a direct rebellion against the purposes of God. God planned that his people would fill the earth (e.g., 1:22, 28; 9:1, 7).
• God had always commanded people to be fruitful and multiply.
• These folks KNEW this was God's will because they said one of the goals of building the city and tower was to prevent being spread out all over the world in verse 4.
• The city tower construction project was intentionally designed to prevent the population from being dispersed over the face of the whole earth.
• The building of the city is in direct defiance of God's will. Instead of scattering and filling the earth after the Flood, humanity decides to gather together and build a civilization that will make a name for themselves.
• When our goal as individuals and as a nation is to avoid following the will of God, we will fail.
• How many millions of lives have been ended in the womb?
• We all pray for cures for cancer and other insidious diseases, aren't we?
• We are praying for other innovations that we hope will protect our planet.
• Just maybe God had provided the ones to do that, only to have their lives ripped apart in what should have been the safety of the womb?
• Look at the chaos we face when we get away from our foundation as a nation.
• What good comes from ignoring God?
• Benjamin Franklin, a signer of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, said it best when he said:
[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
Benjamin Franklin, April 17, 1787.
• It does not matter how many gun control laws are on the books; when someone is corrupt, they will find a way to do what they want.
CONCLUSION
• The story of Babel highlights the desire for human independence from God.
• Babel is a monumental, communal attempt by Adam's race to seize human autonomy from God once more.
• The residents of Babylon put great confidence in their own technology to create a name for themselves.
• They looked to thumb their noses at God and paid the price for doing so.
• We a nation, I pray that we learn the lessons found in the account of the Tower of Babel and that we do not allow history to repeat itself.
• I do not know about you, but I hope this nation is strong until the Lord returns; however, that will never happen unless we pay attention to the shot across our bow and start to get serious about putting this nation back on its foundation.
• You can do your part by ensuring your home is built on the foundation of Jesus Christ and in November, make sure you get out and vote for people who want to do the same.
• Vote for people who will put God and Country ahead of politics and power!
